The TFM members at the rally to mark the 34th anniversary of the CARP at the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) provincial office at San Sebastian Street in Dawis, Bacolod City.*
Hundreds of Task Force Mapalad (TFM) members called on the incoming Marcos administration on Thursday, June 9, to commit itself to complete the implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), which they said the government of outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte promised to achieve but failed to accomplish.
The TFM members staged a rally to mark the 34th anniversary of the CARP at the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) provincial office at San Sebastian Street in Dawis, Bacolod City.
They called on incoming president Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to complete the distribution of 300,000 hectares of private agricultural land to farmers, particularly those in Negros Occidental.
Marcos must tackle the issue of landlessness and delayed distribution of land to CARP beneficiaries if he were to pursue a policy of uniting the nation and dispensing social justice, TFM, a federation of agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) and landless peasants, said in a statement.
TFM also demanded that a law be enacted to mandate the issuance of notices of coverage (NOCs) on private agricultural land.
The incoming administration must look into the huge backlog of the DAR in land acquisition and distribution (LAD), and the willy-nilly reversal to the retrogressive Administrative Order No. 7 that held in abeyance the grant of Certificates of Landownership Award (CLOAs) when landowners file cases before the Office of the President, TFM added
“The incoming administration must implement and complete the LAD under the CARP since it is the cornerstone of the social justice program of the republic,” Teresita Tarlac, president of TFM’s Negros-Panay chapter, said.
“We don’t want any leader tasked to carry out social justice reforms like CARP to fail because we – who were made poor and marginalized by land monopoly – will fail, too, and further suffer,” Tarlac added.
Tarlac urged the incoming DAR secretary to muster enough political will to emancipate farmers in Negros Occidental, many of them still awaiting their installation as most of them face CARP protest cases filed by landlords even as the ownership had already been transferred to the state via RP titles.
CLOAs for these landholdings have not yet been generated and issued to farmer-beneficiaries, she said.
TFM urged the incoming administration to support CARP to the hilt as the country faces higher inflation and food imports like rice, wheat and other commodities have become more expensive.
Tarlac also asked government to give ARBs a fairer deal by cutting back on the interest on land amortization or dispensing with amortizations altogether, and providing subsidies for farmers who have been battered by higher costs of seeds, pesticide, fuel, farm labor and irrigation services.*